Research

Determining the Effect of Urea on the Rate of Decomposition of Organic Materials

The purpose of this experiment was to determine if applying a urea granular fertilizer with an N-P-K value of 45-0-0 at 1% (0.1 oz) of the total weight (12 oz) of organic compost slurry would increase the rate of decomposition of the material within the slurry. The intention was to determine if urea was a sensible catalyst to be used within landfills in order to increase the rate at which the materials decomposed in hopes of prolonging the length of time for which a single landfill could be utilized. In order to determine if urea was a plausible choice for the catalyst which could be applied to landfills in the future, the rates of decomposition of two samples of the organic material slurry were compared: five bottles of 12 oz of slurry in the control group to which no urea had been added, and five bottles of 12 oz of slurry in the treated group to which 0.1 oz of urea had been added. Slurry was used in order to increase the rate of decomposition for the experiment. The bottles of slurry were attached to manometers to gauge the increase of air pressure within the bottles over a period of 24 hours. The gases produced correlated with the amount of material which had decomposed. A two-sample t-test was used to determine if there was a significant difference in the amount of material which had decomposed between the control and treatment groups. There was no significant statistical evidence to conclude that there was a difference in the rates of decomposition. Due to the inconclusive results of the t-test and the descriptive analysis, the hypothesis which stated that the addition of urea to organic materials would increase the rate of decomposition had to be rejected with no evidence to suggest otherwise.